Zeus Kerravala, Founder and Principal Analyst at ZK Research, told UC Today’s Tom Wright at Avaya ENGAGE that the company’s partner strategy is achieving truly unified communications.
Avaya ENGAGE is an annual conference for Avaya’s ecosystem of customers, partners, and employees. This year, partnerships are centre stage at the conference, particularly with the news that came out earlier this week of Avaya’s new partnership deal with RingCentral.
According to industry analyst Zeus Kerravala, Avaya and RingCentral have managed to hash out a deal to expand their partnership to the benefit of their customer base with the likes of RingSense AI, despite the rumours that their relationship was floundering.
It appears to be a similar story across all of Avaya’s recent partnerships—Avaya is creating greater flexibility and a broader and fuller range of UC solutions to choose from with each new partnership and integration, whether it is with RingCentral, LivePerson, Microsoft Teams, Alvaria, Afiniti, or its March collaboration deal with Zoom.
Kerravala explained to UC Today how Avaya’s partner strategy was benefitting its customers: “This isn’t the same Avaya that we knew ten years ago that was six billion dollars in revenue. They are a much smaller company today, but they are much more focused.
“I think under Masarek what they are trying to do is do what they do best and that is build the world’s best calling platform and CX platform.
“By bringing in partners like Zoom and RingCentral… they can fill a lot of gaps. They can bring a lot of broader solutions to market and fulfil the needs of their customer more.
“They can do what’s best for their customer without having to try and do a million different things.
Kerravala continued:
If you look at Avaya’s roster of partners, which historically have been all of their competitors, I think they are doing a really good job at fulfilling that vision of UC that the industry has largely failed at.”
Vendors have been reluctant to form product partnerships in the past, but the industry is now seeing how interoperability can be a win for all parties involved. This change in perspective seems to be paving the way for Avaya to scoop up the technology that its customers are after.
What Avaya’s CEO Says
UC Today’s Tom Wright also spoke to Avaya’s CEO, Alan Masarek, about partnerships at Avaya ENGAGE: “We have a better together philosophy. No one company is going to deliver all the innovation.
“Take generative AI for a second. No one is going to go out there and rebuild what OpenAI has with ChatGPT or Bard or others. It is just too expensive to do that.
“Those solutions are being used by everybody. It will become somewhat ubiquitous in the market.
So the winner is not the person who owns – let’s say ChatGPT – it is who can integrate it all well together to drive a better outcome for the customer. That’s why we focus so much on the partnerships.”
For Masarek, all its new partnerships connect back to his belief in being “better together”, as well as furthering his mission to achieve “innovation without disruption” for its customers.
What Next?
Kerravala seems to agree that Avaya is now in a much better position to serve its customers. That “oddly loyal” customer base can actually start to benefit from a company that is nimble enough to be able to react to the needs of its customers. Partnerships are a key way that Avaya can rapidly grow its product portfolio, which is an important avenue for Avaya to be taking at this time.
To paraphrase Kerravala, ‘It has done what it needs to do internally; now it needs to execute on a product front’. That is not always easy, he points out, particularly with certain integrations that strain the engineering department.
Will Avaya be able to live up to its promises? Watch this space!